Shark Fin with Sleigh Bells?!?

    Does anyone else hear the "Jaws" movie theme music under the Christmas carols being blasted from every store front, restaurant, grocery store, and every other public space? Just me? Hmm... maybe I should've gotten things together earlier this year.
    Okay, I'll just wait here until you quit laughing about me having anything at all together. ;)
    I know I'm not the only parent out there feeling ambushed by the holiday season this year. I don't know how a static holiday date can always pop up suddenly, but here we are. Again. Scrambling for a semblance of calm in the middle of the three weeks before Christmas rush. This year totally has my vote to go back to the olden days with a week of feasting around celebrating the solstice and the fact the the days are going to start getting longer again (minus the sacrificing friends and family, and the constant threat of freezing or starving... that turned dark quickly... oops).
    Something to brighten up your day if you're suffering shopping panic: there are a ton of trade and vendor shows happening that can provide you with thoughtful and hand-made items. This show, specifically, I think you should come to:

    Why should you come to this show specifically? 
        1. It's at the Alberta Aviation Museum, and that place is cool to visit.
        2. There will be over 100 vendors, each one having great gifts and/or ideas to help you through the holidays.
        3. I'm going to be there! You should come visit my table and say hello and buy books!
    Click the image above to redirect to the Facebook event set up for the show. You can get all the details, plus invite friends who might be interested. Hopefully we'll see you there!

    Something near and dear to my heart, and I think everyone can agree, is that literacy is really, really important. It's also something stat's prove a large percentage of teens and adults struggle with daily. That's where Story Shares comes in! They are a USA based nonprofit focused on supporting teens and adults around the world who struggle with reading.
   This year, I was lucky enough to have one of my short stories included into the Story Shares library! This December is their Best Seller Challenge. I'd love if you picked up a copy of my story, and any other of their books that catch your eye! All profits go directly back into creating more resources to help struggling readers.
   Click the Story Shares image above to learn more about them, or any of the images below to redirect to my book. You're helping someone learn to read with every purchase!

    Back to the topic of books - because who doesn't like that topic, right? - I got to do a little bit of writing this week. Not nearly as much as I wanted to, seems like everyone in our house is getting sick with different things so at least two of us are under the weather on each day, but at least I got a bit done. I also did a #PitMad pitch party on Twitter yesterday.
    What a crazily intense and wonderfully supportive experience! The premise of #PitMad and #PitchWars is that writers can attempt to sell their books to agents / publishers using tweets; maximum three tweets per manuscript. Friends and colleagues encourage each other by retweeting the pitches, and agents and publishers who "like" the posts are giving permission to the writers they liked for skipping the line on their query submissions. As in, if the agent "likes" your tweet, you reference the tweet and send in your query and they look at your work nearly immediately. I didn't get any agents "liking" my tweets, but as a first-time attempt (and fighting internally against the feeling of being like a skeezy used-car salesman by attempting to self-promote), I think getting a total of 32 retweets across my two pitches was pretty amazing. There was so much writing world support yesterday! Now I'm super excited to see the new books that are going to be coming out in a year or two because of this event - the tweets that got agent notice were all books I want to read!
​    Hope your weekend is a good one!

Need a short story to get you through the day?

​I've got something for that!